My baby girl is growing up. I just came home from picking her up from her first paid job. It was just waitressing at a friend of mine's party but she is only 13 so the saltmines came a little earlier than I had in mind. Her 14-year-old friend worked alongside her and they were there until 11 p.m. Lucky it's not a school night.

Is there something transformational that happens when your child goes out to work? Is there a wand waved somewhere making parents instantly behave like their own parents? I felt the need to scrutinise the clothes the girls were wearing. They held up dresses that I earnestly thought were tops and asked what they were planning to wear with them. I insisted they wear shorts as well.

I was thinking through the likely scenarios as the pretty young things wearing practically nothing had to offer food to young men getting increasingly intoxicated as the night went on and chatted to the girls on the way about how to handle it.

I worried the whole time they were gone.

In the car on the way home, I discovered that these girls didn't need any help from me in handling themselves. They had given everyone at the party code nicknames to amuse themselves, quoted examples of the wit they had used to rebut the drunken nonsense as the party got older and had ranked the partygoers in terms of "hotness" and then changed their rankings based on the behaviour of the ‘hotties' as they had a few more drinks.

They were savvy, funny and amused at the so-called adult behaviour they had witnessed. It will be a few years before they actually attend parties like that, but boy will they be ready.

I hope their mothers are.